Ants

Last weekend we watched a documentary about tool use in chimpanzees, specifically how they use sticks to fish insects out of termite mounds. The kids were enormously impressed by this. A couple of days later they were both explaining the details of what the chimps did, down to the fact that in the zoo the fake termite mound was baited with ketchup and mustard rather than termites (due to building regulations; that factoid was from me, not the kids).

Today they went to the playground with Claire. At one point they were crouched down playing with sticks, poking them into a mound of bark. Claire asked them what they were doing, and was told that they were trying to catch ants just like the chimps.